Maverick FX: Everything You Need To Know

Maverick FX

Maverick Trading and Maverick FX promises to “train, support, and fund traders” with upwards of $800,000 per newbie trader. And that they will provide ‘firm capital’. They don’t. It is a lie.

Maverick Trading is currently running thousands of Help Wanted advertisements across the United States. Masquerading as a ‘prop trading job’. There is no job.

The newbie and the naive are teased and tempted into an expensive educational program with never ending monthly fees. All trading capital must be provided by the job seeking person or student. This is a modern day, work from home scam.

The program is sold by extremely clever salesman. There is no pot of gold at the end of this rainbow.

Cons:Absolutely does not provide capital to trader. A trading educator masquerading as a prop trading firm. There is no "job."

Thanks for reading today’s review of Maverick FX

What is Maverick FX? Maverick FX is a supposed proprietary trading firm, that purports to offer fully funded trading accounts to newbie traders. The company is located at 12 Broadway, Salt Lake City, Utah. Although this is the ‘official address’ of Maverick Trading, I would not consider this a physical location. Maverick FX is an internet based business. There isn’t really an office. I would consider this location just a mail drop. A credibility showpiece.

On March 27, 2017, TradingSchools.Org published an official review of Maverick Trading. However, that review was focused on just the stock trading ‘opportunity’. The review was mostly mixed. On one hand, the owners of Maverick Trading were open and honest with TradingSchools.Org during the review process. I found Robb Reinhold, John Frohlich, and Darren Fischer to be mostly forthright characters.

If you did not read that review, to briefly recap, Maverick Trading is supposedly offering fully funded trading accounts to brand new traders. At the core of Maverick Trading is the educational program, which costs $6,000 per student. Once a person completes the educational program, they then supposedly receive a fully funded trading account.

There is NO fully funded trading account

In our original review, we described in exact detail that Maverick Trading does not ever provide a fully funded trading account. To anyone. Ever.

Here is how it how it actually works…a person pays an upfront educational fee and then jumps through some hoops of fire. Once the person jumps through the hoops of fire, then Maverick Trading declares, “Congratulations! You passed! You are now a Maverick Trader!”

To continue to the next round, the person then must send Maverick Trading an additional $5,000.

Maverick Trading will then take your $5,000 and then open a trading account, on your behalf.

If you make any trading profits, with your own money, you will then pay Maverick Trading 30% of whatever profits you earn. You get to keep 70% of your profits.

If you lose money trading, then you accept 100% of the losses. Maverick Trading does not take any losses.

In addition, you must pay an additional $199 per month, to remain a “Maverick Trader.” The monthly fee is in perpetuity.

What do you get for $199 per month? You get to meet other Maverick Traders twice a week, through an online meeting. During the meeting, the Maverick Traders share ideas and encourage each other to keep going.

Once again, I have to repeat…Maverick Trading provides NO RISK CAPITAL, NO FUNDED TRADING ACCOUNT to any trader. Ever.

Maverick FX

With our initial review, we only talked about the Maverick Trader stocks trading program. We never mentioned the Maverick FX trading program. What is the difference? Essentially, there is no difference. But the fee structure for Maverick FX is lower. The Maverick FX ‘prop trading’ product appears to be tailored towards individuals with fewer resources.

With Maverick FX, a person pays an upfront fee of $1,500. And an additional $199 per month to be part of the Maverick FX group.

Once again, a person must jump through the hoops of fire, and once they have completed the hoop jumping, they will be declared a Maverick FX proprietary trader.

The person then must send Maverick FX an additional $2,000 to open a funded trading account.

If the person makes any profit, they get to keep 70% of whatever they earn. If they lose, they accept 100% of the losses.

Maverick FX: We dont fund traders.

This graphic is very clever. It gives the appearance that Maverick FX is giving the trader a minimum of $25,000, with a maximum of $800,000. But you must understand something, the ‘Trading Capital’ displayed on this pretty table is your own money. None of the money is contributed by Maverick FX Trading.

If you want to earn 80%, you must deposit a minimum of $400,000.

It’s clever for sure. But this is how these guys operate.

How does Maverick and Maverick FX find new traders?

Help wanted advertising. And not just a few help wanted ads. We are talking about thousands upon thousands of online, help wanted ads. The following links are just a few examples:

I especially found the Career Builder ads to most entertaining. Notice how people that are innocently searching for jobs in accounting, data management, or financial analyst can inadvertently stumble into what appears to be an actual job listing. On the surface, the ad looks just like a job. But it’s not. It is a clever trick to lure in the unsuspecting.

Also, notice on these websites the supposed income that each trader is earning–typically $80,000 to $160,000 per year. Of course, this is all self-reported, mumbo-jumbo. As a matter of fact, I created an income profile for myself and reported my average yearly at $400,000 as an ‘entry level prop trader’.

And read some of the supposed user reviews, its pure comedy. One supposed “employee” of Maverick Trading claims that after years of working at major prop firms, including Goldman Sachs, he decided to leave for Maverick Trading. Ok, so are supposed to believe that a person left a job at Goldman Sachs for a job at Maverick Trading. When I read this, I just laughed.

The big question that I wanted to know? How much money is Maverick Trading spending on Help Wanted Ads? And so, my next step was to contact each of these help wanted advertising websites and declare that I wanted to replicate the help wanted advertising strategy of Maverick Trading and Maverick FX. Considering that Maverick FX and Maverick Trading are advertising for traders everywhere from Tombstone, Arizona to Turkey Creek, South Carolina…I expected to spend quite a lot.

It turns out that in order to replicate the advertising strategy of Maverick Trading and Maverick FX, you would need to spend about $20,000 per month in help wanted ads.

One job site, sales account representative quipped, “these guys apparently hire more people than WalMart.” I responded: when your employees are paying you for a job, you want to hire as many as possible! We both broke into an uproarious laughter.

Maverick Trading Complaints

One of the big advantages of writing a blog about trading products is the relative ease in which Google will rank specific keywords related to the search subject. With my original review of Maverick Trading, the review took about two months before the review began to hit page one of Google for search terms related to Maverick Trading.

As the search terms began to rank higher, I started to pick up more traffic related to Maverick Trading and Maverick FX. Pretty soon…my inbox started to fill up with complaints about this company.

Since Maverick Trading and Maverick FX are heavy advertising spenders, the ‘Help Wanted’ ad sites where protecting Maverick Trading from negative chatter. They want to keep those help wanted ads running.

So how many complaints has TradingSchools.Org received regarding Maverick Trading and Maverick FX? Dozens. I have lost count.

One complaint in particular really stuck with me. A customer named Wes Watson described his experience with Maverick FX. Back in 2013, Wes was looking for a job. With a wife and kids, he needed to get back to work immediately. His wife stumbled upon a help-wanted advertisement posted on Craigslist.

The ‘job’ cooed with promise. “We are looking for traders to manage company funds. No experience required. You will complete our award winning training program and we will give you up to $800,000 in funds in which to trade. Most beginning traders are earning $80,000 to $160,000 per year.”

Wow, what a dream come true. Wes thought he had hit the super-lotto. They were going to give him up to $800,000 to trade! With a stary-eyed innocents, Wes stumbled through the interview process. Which is mainly just a circus act meant to convey a sense of exclusivity. That he “had been chosen” as someone special. That they had recognized his special talents, even though he no idea the difference between Forex and a fidget spinner.

Sure, the upfront fee didn’t quite feel right. But he read that others were making up to $160,000 per year. So Wes thought to himself, “if they can do it, so can I.”

What happened next is a sad tale. That is often told. Wes desperately completed his training in 6 months. Consumed all of the course work on understanding technical analysis, and made $14 on a trading simulator. He was ready! Next, he mailed in a check with his last $2,000 dollars. His wife cringed but kept the faith. Well, it took a few more months before Wes lost his $2000. In the meantime, he racked up thousands of dollars in credit card debt. He still had to pay off the ‘educational fees’ and the ‘monthly job fee’.

What was supposed to be a job, turned into a fucked-up $8,000 odyssey.

At the end of the day, Wes wrote me a long and heartbreaking letter. Totally discouraged and pissed off. He felt like he had been totally and completely scammed by Maverick FX. The promise of Maverick FX and Forex trading glory was all a mirage. There never was any ‘firm capital’.

I can continue with a dozen more stories, just like Wes’s story. But I am sure that you get the point.

Nearly nobody had made any money. In fact, once we calculated how much TopStepTrader was earning by charging people to trade on a simulator, we were simply shocked. People were throwing themselves off of a financial cliff in the naive hopes of being awarded what amounted to a $250 trading account.

We discovered that people had spent 10’s of thousands of dollars for only a token reward. For the faint promise of having a ridiculously fancy title of Prop Trader.

Maverick Trading and Maverick FX is no different. It is just another version of a “Work at home” scam. Where you pay a fee to learn how to work from home, and you pay a fee for the tools so you can work from home.

With no capitalization, why on Earth would anyone fund their account through them so they can take a big cut of your profits, yet leave you on the hook for all your losses- and charge you $199 for that privilege!

I don’t even see how it’s legal for them to take a portion of your profits when they aren’t offering you anything. What a rip off/con.

Trading is difficult enough without adding anchors like a high monthly fee and losing a cut of your earnings.

This was a great follow up. Seems the new angle is corralling new bucks with a funded account. Top Step opened many a scumbag eye on how lucrative that hamster wheel can be . I personally know 2 people who spend thousands over a 2 year period and never got funded … There was no helping them either, they were like adicts , convinced the next go would be better because they learned something from the last failure.

Well said. The tradingschools reviews and updates on TopStep and Maverick+FX are eye-opening and the only reviews that give the eye-opening truth about these hamster-wheel “business model” scams. TopStep in particular had long been ridiculously shilled, dream journaled, and kool-aided on the compromised feeforum.

Jjj GHG, You must be careful looking into some of these blogs that look great at first, but may also have ulterior motives and will try to sell you content that you can find for free. If you spend time researching financial blogs you will eventually come across one that fits your personality which also creates value for you. However, they can be really slick and really only be for profit. Do a search of top financial blogs and websites. Then you can narrow it down from macro perspectives to technical analysis heavy to product specific.

Yes, a lot of these sites with a “free” section or a “free” tool search have >optional< premium upgrades. if you're wised up you can pretty much tell how much the free info is worth it to your stock research and which sites look more like mainly ads for more shammy newsletters and churned service signups.

I see where I posted about “privatebankers” forum site in a comment lower on this page. Sorry, I don’t remember at all where was that site or what it’s name was anymore. It felt like a complete waste of time from I vaguely recall now. Also the site owner was advertising private mentoring for thousands$,not surprisingly , I did remember.

I’m not sure what you mean JjjGhg? I don’t think I linked to any stock site, just recently links to news reports and DoJ reports on a few recent scammers now criminals charged by the law for fraud. I had responded to the thread about RobB’s pointing out tipranks.com if that’s what you’re referring to. Bear in mind, RobB specifically said he was trying to help readers because he said he kept being asked for a recommendation. Yet some nincompoops tried to take it all out of context and claim it was shilling. It is not. I could point out… Read more »

Not sure if he is referring to the one I mentioned. I will mention another method I use to get ideas and actually just bought a stock based on this method. Now after posting a site previously, this time I will not mention any site as you can easily find a free one. First I read Barrons, WSJ and many other financial papers, so I have read and listened to lots of various hedge fund managers and know which ones I like. I go to a site that shows the latest (previous quarter) stocks each hedge funds managers has been… Read more »

This reminds of the emails you get from the Nigerian Prince who will pay you a fortune to move his millions to the US, but first you just have to send him $5,000 via western union.

I can see how Top Step is able to sucker people in on their complicated rules where you suppose to get funded, but this one makes no sense from the get go. If a job expects you to pay them money, you might want to look for another job.

Hey, I like that Prince. At least, he allows me to have nice dreams of all the things that I can do with all that free cash. There is only one problem. I am too much of a skinflint and too greedy to KEEP my own money, so I can never seem to manage to send the $5k or so that they need just to clear Customs and get the other paperwork going. Bummer. 🙂

I have lost count of the number of people that I have asked, “Why would you pay somebody to employ you?”

They come back with, “The cost is to cover the training and materials.”

I ask, “So you are paying your employer to train you? Why? Does a waiter pay the bar to train him? What about the bartender? Or maybe, store clerks pay the store to train them? Carpenters pay the contractor to train them?”

Wait for it. Wait for it. Here comes the killer response. “You are just a dream-killer. You just do not understand.”

Sadly, we understand perfectly. Maybe you can add this to your list at the end. Well if you think you need to pay them, shouldn’t you at least actually see brokerage statements showing some proof they can actual trade profitably? Of course that too will fall upon deaf ears. I know as once I woke up from my Kool-Aid induced state and everything was so obvious I thought I would spread the word and bam did I run into a brick wall. It is just unbelievable how powerful that Kool-Aid is. I on the other hand could not convince someone… Read more »

The biggest lesson of these commentary RobB’s seminal statement, statistically all these TR are cons and shamshows and have stopped trying to trade live after sucessfully starting to procure a monthly churn of dupes. It doesn’t matter some newbs leave through the revolving door after 30 or 90 days or however long the sham artist uses tricks such as extra red herring hosts or actored shills in the room. There’s always a new generation of new aspiring retail trader newbs each much where many unfortuantely had not seen trading schools and only the shilled and vigged media about existing shams… Read more »

Good memory, I had forgotten about Private Banker and his sham spinoff site. And the fisher guy, I can’t remember his name, but had a site with a tagline that read “fishing the futures markets, catching daily”. BMT was such a fraud swamp.

Good follow up on Maverick & “FX. since the previous review shows up on the first page of google search and imo paints too good a rating for those snakeoilers. Important to know about all these faux ads of help wanted where there is no fund money of any kind to trade with. It makes sense how the complaints on other sites were pushed down by the constant ads similar to how Sykes flooded the web with his fake review sites. I looked at their ad many years ago, and fortunately a buried old thread post on elite saved me… Read more »